I once
wrote a small column for the Punch. I was a lot younger with a lot of fire in
the belly. Despite the mad tussle with deadlines and the once in a while
writers block, it was fun. I had very strong opinions and could not wait for
people to hear them. Of course, when you are young, you think that you are the
only one who has an opinion that counts. As you get older however, you begin to
realize how stupid you have been. Everybody has an opinion and everybody thinks
that their opinion counts.
A 29 year
old American called Mark Elliot Zuckerberg found out how much everybody wants
to express their opinion. As a result, Zuckerberg has become a billionaire
several times over. On Zuckerberg’s Facebook, everybody is expressing their
opinion to everybody whether they want to hear or not. Dirty linens are being
washed with the whole world watching and the stinking water splashed around
with complete abandon. Girls are stalking guys on Facebook and guys are
enjoying being stalked. You can’t be on Facebook and not say something. It is
like a huge Oyingbo market. So, everybody is talking, everybody is lying and
everybody is posing. In the new world of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and BBM,
everybody is a publisher, everybody is an editor and everybody is a columnist.
Several
times recently, I have been asked to write a column for a newspaper. Several
times I have said no. Why? As I have grown older, I have taken more to heart
the Igbo saying that a palm wine tapper does not reveal everything he sees from
the top of the palm wine tree. Just imagine what would happen in the kindred if
the local palm wine tapper had to describe the luscious naked women who thought
they were bathing safely away from prying eyes or the illicit love affairs
where the lovers thought they were in a world of their own and that apart from
the skies, their secret was all theirs or the big tubers of yam thought to be
secure from all and sundry in the rich man’s ban. Like the local palm wine
tapper, I have seen quite a bit and I have thought it better for me to stay
away from the babble.
The other
matter is: Is anyone really interested in what I have to say? Is anyone going
to read what I write when all the kids are busy pinging and charting away on
their Blackberry or playing computer games? Have you noticed that it is almost
impossible these days to hold the attention of any young person for five
minutes except of course you are telling him of a new cheaper and faster data
plan?
Then, there
is the question of how I will find the time to write anything in the midst of a
crushing schedule. How do I write a column when Tee Mac is busy telling
everybody that I am a fraud and the people at BON are looking for my head and
every artiste wants more royalties? Pray, how do I write a column when Chinedu
Chukwuji, my oga at the top, warns me that I need a break urgently but goes
ahead to schedule back to back meetings for me with lawyers and impossible
Nigerian broadcasters who look for every reason under the sun to avoid paying
small royalty for the music that sustains their operations?
As if I
have not stressed my marriage enough - how do I tell madam that with my eyes
open, I have added to the wahala she has to tolerate – night after cold nights
when at 2 am, 3 am and 4 am, the whole world is sleeping and she tiptoes into
the study to find me hunched over, hammering at the keyboard of my long
suffering lap top? I still do not
understand how I was trapped into saying yes to writing a column for a
newspaper when the whole world is writing columns on Facebook. Is it the old
school guy in me clinging to a past that is fast disappearing? While a lot of
people I know get all their news these days on the Internet, I still read
newspapers the old fashioned way. I still cannot manage a day going by without
me caressing some newsprint.
You know, I
used to read Rueben Abati like mad. Outside of Ray Ekpu and my ‘paddy’, Sonala
Olumhense, I thought Rueben was the real deal. He has style. Till today I
cannot figure out how Rueben could give up the best job in the world. For
what?! Seriously, how much does GEJ pay Rueben to write those drab government
press releases? It takes a peculiar kind of talent to be a good government
propagandist and I do not think that Rueben has that kind of talent. Seriously,
there has to be something in the constitution that makes it a capital offence
to take a great guy like Ruben Abati and make him the writer of government
press releases.
N.B. THE LOCOMOTION SERIES IS PUBLISHED WEEKLY IN SATURDAY
INDEPENDENT ON PAGE 37
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